Bell Canada restores internet service after outage hits users in Quebec, Ontario


A public payphone from Bell Canada in Toronto, Ontario, Canada December 13, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/File Photo

(Reuters) -Bell Canada said on Wednesday it had rolled back an update and restored internet services after a nearly two-hour outage hit tens of thousands of customers in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.

The update impacted some of Bell's routers, the BCE unit said, adding that the services had been "fully restored" as of 11:00 a.m. ET.

"We want to assure our customers and partners that this was a technical issue and we have ruled out a cybersecurity incident as the root cause," Bell said in an emailed response.

The company said its network teams were conducting a full review to prevent an outage from occurring again. Bell has 4.4 million retail high-speed internet subscribers, according to its first-quarter shareholder report.

The outage started around 9 a.m. ET and triggered more than 130,000 disruption reports at its peak, according to tracking website Downdetector.com.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted reports. The actual number of affected users may vary.

Bell Canada advised its users "who are still experiencing issues" to reboot the modem, according to a post on its Facebook page.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)

Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel for breaking news alerts and key updates!

Next In Tech News

US activists work to connect Iranians via Starlink
New on the iPhone: Shazam songs even when offline with iOS 26.4
First Robot: Melania Trump brings droid to White House event
Why AI means animal testing is not always needed to trial new medicines
Day of reckoning arrives for social media after US court loss
Teens get probation after using AI to create fake nudes of classmates
Revolut to base 40% of its global workforce in India by 2026
Apple rolls out age checks for UK users
Munich Re: AI making cyber attacks costlier and more effective
Nanya Technology shares surge 10% after $2.5 billion fundraising

Others Also Read